From what I understand, it's mostly business related. A lot of hiring people in African countries and treating them very well, favorable trade arrangements, etc. Also the religious demographics are an important factor (remember that evangelical Christians love Israel. I'm betting if they polled more African countries, several others would show high favorability (BBC polled 22 countries, worldwide).

This is basically educated guessing and partial recollection; I could be very wrong._________________“Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation”
yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

Bit of a shock that they're down there with North Korea and Iran, at least to me.

Not that much to me; since Israel' Govt. turned hardline conservatists, they lost a great deal of international goodwill. No surprise here, no one likes htem much anymore.

The comments were interesting to read. That BBC is pro-palestinian that anti-semitism is on the rise or other linke-minded replies were the only possible reasons offered as to why the current image is so poor.

Demography changed and the governemental media blitz, not unlike Republican party during last US elections, failed to adapt._________________Meu aerobarca esta cheoi de enguias

Bit of a shock that they're down there with North Korea and Iran, at least to me.

No surprise there. I'm only guessing but I think the Nigeria and Kenyan result can be explained, in part at least, by the growing evangelical movement._________________A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Interesting article, even though I don't know how much this will change anything. I mean, I don't think it will change the doubters minds, because it also supports the opposing Scientific theories. It almost seems like a "duh" bit of research, as far as that article describes. Anyone who knows anything about the surface warming of the ocean would know that it increases salinity. That's why the Red Sea has such high salinity, due to its high evaporation. Really though, the only problem I have with this "research" personally at the moment is I can't find a complete detail of it. I've been searching to see more, but to no avail. I'd like to see the numbers and the conditions for their experiment. For instance, to properly support full global warming theory, ALL oceans would have to have an increase. But, I haven't been able to find anything other than people talking ABOUT the study. No data. =/ I'd love it if someone else had seen some they could link me. I'd be interested in reading raw data myself instead of just a summarizing news article.

My wife from studies she read over in her classes (a couple years ago mind you), much data equally supported theories such as Geomagnetic Reversal just as much as Global Warming. In fact, if the new data only showed increases in salinity in certain places, it might even further add to Geomagnetic Reversal or at least the idea of polar shifts. So just hearing the news that there was a study doesn't tell me much. And most of these research statistics only amount to the summary of the conclusion and not the data that got there. I want to know more! Gyah.

Either way, I think we as humans still need to think on the terms of causing less environmental pollution, Global Warming or not. I'm kind of the agnostic equivalent when it comes to Global Warming, in that the science shows many possibilities so far. I still think mankind is going to be affecting the planet either way, so I support the continued Global Warming precaution, in that I think even if Global Warming wasn't true, we're still changing things. The same things we do to combat Global Warming also prevent other changes we are causing. I believe that more than ever with my wife's studies in Chiropractic school. They're always focusing their research on how chemicals change us as humans permanently, and even things we do to help ourselves as humans...For instance, we don't even know how one medicine can affect us down the road. So Global Warming or no Global Warming, one way or another, us humans' moving chemicals into the air is affecting the planet and in some cases changing the properties of things permanently just through the chemical reactions.

But if anyone has a link to that data talked about in that article, I'd appreciate it!_________________

You could email the correspondence author and ask for the full paper, but I'd leave out the "I think your data may point to different conclusions than you came to" part. Authors have an interest in getting people to read their work, where peer-reviewed journals have an interest in selling subscriptions. If you want to pay to read the article, though, there's your chance._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

I'd like to see the numbers and the conditions for their experiment. For instance, to properly support full global warming theory, ALL oceans would have to have an increase.

Not necessarily. It depends on how much precipitation any given region of the global ocean gets, since this model predicts that the wet get wetter and therefore more diluted. If the Antarctic seas, with their circumpolar current, get more precipitation (as snow directly on the surface, or as ice being pushed off the continent) than they lose from evaporation, or if they gain more fresh water than than they get salty water from mixing with the rest of the ocean, they can conceivably become less briny over time. The Arctic might experience an overall decrease in salinity if its fresh water is no longer locked up as ice caps, or if glaciers from Greenland and other terrestrial sources are losing ice quickly enough.

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My wife from studies she read over in her classes (a couple years ago mind you), much data equally supported theories such as Geomagnetic Reversal just as much as Global Warming.

That's bullshit. There is no way that a geomagnetic reversal will reproduce this exact set of symptoms, nor the instrumental temperature record from land stations, buoys, and satellite measurements.

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In fact, if the new data only showed increases in salinity in certain places, it might even further add to Geomagnetic Reversal or at least the idea of polar shifts.

How would that even work?

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I'm kind of the agnostic equivalent when it comes to Global Warming, in that the science shows many possibilities so far.

It really doesn't. Like scientist Stephen Schneider said, you can't add 4 watts of energy over every square meter of the Earth and have nothing happen.

Ocean salinity changes are driven by patterns of evaporation and rainfall, which themselves are changing. Observations over recent decades have found a general intensification of salinity differences in which salty ocean regions, most notably in the north Atlantic Ocean, experience even more evaporation of surface waters and relatively fresh regions are becoming even more diluted with precipitation. These patterns are part of global changes in precipitation and evaporation that influence the amount of rainfall over land.

(my bold)

global warming means the earth as a whole is getting warmer, but the heat is not evenly distributed (any more than the changes in salinity are). that is what is driving extreme weather events - wind circulation patterns are driven by differences in temperature, which cause differences in pressure. similarly, ocean currents are affected by differences in densities, which are highly correlated with differences in salinities. if you have increasingly sharp salinity boundaries - say, where a major river runs into the ocean - well, potentially all kinds of things can happen.

i'm at a university, i don't know if access to this is limited for non-university computers - but you could certainly contact the first author for a reprint:
David W. Pierce
Division of Climate, Atmospheric Sciences, and Physical Oceanography, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California, USA_________________aka: neverscared!